Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Anxiety, Panic Attacks, Episode 4, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Communication, Post-Scene: Ilya Rozanov Makes Tuna Melts in Episode: s01e04 Rose

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-01-31 Words: 2,423 Chapters: 1/1

stretch out my life and pick the seams out

Summary

“Everything is different,” Shane says, and there’s a telltale tightness building in his chest.

“It does not have to be,” Ilya says, in a rush, like he hasn’t spent an entire day making everything different.

Notes

I wrote half of this on my phone this morning at 3am when I couldn't sleep and the other half tonight while I was supposed to be doing grad school homework.
Please know that the draft in my google docs is named Tuna Meltdown. Have other people made this joke? Probably. Did I still make myself giggle? Yes. 😂
Actual title from Mumford & Sons "Lovers of the Light"

It’s only once he’s outside, breathing hard and heart racing like he just got off the ice, that Shane realizes he’s still wearing Ilya’s clothes. The shirt is so big on him it will be an immediate giveaway. Maybe Hayden will be out to dinner when he gets back to their room. Maybe he’ll be on FaceTime with Jackie and the kids and it won’t even register that Shane left in jeans and a t-shirt and a leather jacket and came back in joggers and a shirt obviously, comically big on him. Ilya isn’t even that much bigger than he is, but he likes his t-shirts big (and his tank tops small, and Shane apparently needs to add more to the list of things he’s accidentally learned and remembered about Ilya Rozanov over the last eight years). 

But…Shane likes that leather jacket. It’s the most expensive item of clothing he’s ever bought himself (hockey gear doesn’t count). It’s buttery soft and isn’t particularly warm so it’s also the most impractical thing he’s ever bought. Something he got purely because he liked it. He didn’t even really let himself spiral over how much it cost (at the time. The extra zeros on his credit card bill a few weeks later did give him some pause.) 

He tells himself it’s fine. He can get it from Rozanov next time.  

Except. 

Will there be a next time?

Shane replays their conversation. His panicked stammered excuses. Rozanov’s face, trying and failing to slip back behind his usual mask, his hand reaching for Shane, maybe without even realizing he was. 

I can’t do this, Shane had said and he’d only meant stay the night but Rozanov would be well within his rights to think Shane meant all of it. 

Ilya. He’d called him Ilya and Ilya had called him Shane, and Shane feels pathetic that something he’s been pretending not to want for years has sent him running, skittering away like the same poles on magnets when usually they’re the other way around. Opposite poles, pulled together with no hope of resisting. 

His stupid, mutinous brain offers him more. Ilya’s hand down the back of Shane’s shirt. Ilya’s nose pressed against his face. Fucking make me, Ilya had growled at him and Shane had. Ilya’s lips, chasing his, before he realized Shane was already gone. 

And earlier than that, Ilya lifting him into the counter, just standing there kissing him for what had felt like an hour. Kissing him like it didn’t matter if they never got around to doing anything else. 

And last month, in Montreal, Ilya in that blue Adidas shirt that fit him perfectly, that matched his eyes, kissing him all the way up the stairs to Shane’s bedroom. And then taking him apart in his bed. The only one Shane has ever allowed to take him there. Anywhere. Everywhere. 

And six years ago, in room 1410. When Ilya had knocked and Shane had answered. He opened the door not knowing it was Pandora’s box, not knowing he wasn’t going to be able to put everything back inside. He should’ve known, maybe, from the first time their eyes met in that parking lot in Regina, and his heart had thumped a tattoo inside his ribcage. I know you. Already. Always. 

So what is he fucking doing, here, now, standing outside in Ilya’s clothes like there’s any hope of putting the lid back on any of this? Like that’s something he even wants?

His phone buzzes in his hand, alerting him that his Uber driver is two minutes away. Shane stares, watching as the car icon turns onto Ilya’s street. (It’s a long street. And a long driveway.) His thumb is on the cancel ride button before he can second guess himself. 

He turns and walks back up the long gravel driveway, past Ilya’s orange Porsche parked ostentatiously outside when Shane’s pretty sure there’s space for it in the three-car garage. Maybe not. Maybe there’s an Aston Martin and a Ferrari and a fucking Lamborghini in the garage already, each of them in increasingly obnoxious colors. Flashy, smoke and mirrors, just a distraction from the Ilya who buys ginger ale and makes tuna melts. Or a cover, maybe. A hard shell protecting a heart Shane has been careless with. 

He knocks. And rings the bell. And knocks again. He’s about to ring the bell again when the door swings open, like they get to rewind back to the beginning. 

Except of course they don’t. Shane’s been standing in the driveway long enough for Ilya to pull on a hoodie and more firmly fix his face into its flat mask. The one that says nothing to see here. 

“You forget something?” Ilya asks, cold, his eyes looking over Shane’s shoulder instead of at his face. 

“Yes,” Shane says, pushing forward, back into the house before Ilya can stop him. And then he’s turning, and he’s grabbing Ilya by the front of his sweatshirt, and he knows it’s only because he has the element of surprise on his side, because Ilya truly has no idea what Shane is doing, that he stumbles forward the two steps it takes to close the distance between them, to get close enough for Shane to put his arms around him and hold him. 

“I’m sorry,” Shane says, his lips brushing Ilya’s ear. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, I freaked out.” 

Ilya resists and Shane starts counting in his head, resolves to let go when he gets to ten, like somehow that’s the threshold that protects his pride. At seven, Ilya sways closer, pressing his face into Shane’s neck. At nine, his arms wrap around Shane’s waist. 

“I’m sorry,” Shane says again. “Can I take it back? Can I stay? Please?”

Ilya breathes a ragged breath against his neck. “I don’t know. Will you freak out if I try to feed you again later?”

“I don’t know. Probably. I’ll try not to.”

“Shower?” Ilya asks, and Shane nods. That’s an easy thing. And a necessary one, now that he’s coming down from the adrenaline cliff his anxiety always puts him on, he’s aware that he feels sticky and gross in Ilya’s sweatpants. 

They touch the whole way, Ilya’s hands on Shane’s hips, steering him through the living room and then past the bed (he’s already stripped it, a stack of folded, clean sheets sitting at the foot, waiting to be put on), into the bathroom. It’s nearly as big as the bedroom, with a giant soaking tub and a shower more than big enough for two. Ilya turns on the water, adjusting the temperature without needing to look at the dial, and then he starts peeling his clothes off, tossing them in the direction of the hamper in the corner. 

Shane does the same, cringing at how exposed he feels. 

“Come here,” Ilya says, reaching, pulling Shane in, holding him close while they wait for the water to warm up. 

“Everything is different,” Shane says, and there’s a telltale tightness building in his chest. Not off the adrenaline cliff yet, after all. 

“It does not have to be,” Ilya says, in a rush, like he hasn’t spent an entire day making everything different. On purpose, Shane’s pretty sure. Ilya had enough tuna salad ready to go in his fridge for two sandwiches. He had ginger ale. He asked Shane to stay and gave him his own clothes to wear. 

Shane’s breath catches in his chest and he steps out of Ilya’s arms, tries to breathe. He’s been teetering on the edge of a panic attack since Ilya called him Shane, and now he’s about to have one, naked in Ilya’s bathroom. It’s the kind of thing that’s so ridiculous he doesn’t know if his brain would’ve ever been able to come up with this specific scenario to be anxious about, and that sends a hysterical laugh rattling out of his chest.

“Shane,” Ilya says, and when Shane manages to look at him his eyebrows are pinched together with worry, his face back to being soft and different. 

“This is an actual panic attack,” he gasps. At least he’s lucid enough to know that. Sometimes he doesn’t, sometimes he’s in the middle of it before he realizes that he’s not dying. Sometimes he wakes up gasping, heart racing, sweating, convinced that he’s having a heart attack, convinced that he’s going to die alone in his apartment and no one will find him until it’s too late. Usually he stumbles into the bathroom and sits with the cold tile against his back and forces himself to breathe until he’s sure he’s not actually dead.

“Shane,” Ilya says again. “Look at me.”

Shane does, but it’s immediately too much: Ilya’s soft and worried eyes, the spread of his shoulders, the cut of his jaw, the moles that make constellations on his chest.

Shane’s ruined for everything that isn’t this, isn’t him, and he was too young when they started to realize that this was the only place it could possibly go, that there was only ever going to be the two of them, on the ice and off it.

“Hollander,” Ilya says, and this time his voice sounds like they’re on the ice, like he’s ready to deliver one of his usual faceoff chirps. “I am very worried about your diet if a tuna melt can do this to you.”

It’s dumb. It’s so fucking dumb but it it’s enough to make Shane laugh, which forces him to breathe. “Fuck off,” he says, and Ilya pulls him back in, curls a hand around the back of his neck and just holds him. Shane takes another stuttering breath in. 

“Good,” Ilya says. “Keep doing that, da?”

“Da,” Shane says, and Ilya’s face does the soft, fond thing again. Jesus. “Can we get in the shower?”

“I am afraid you will drown.”

Shane shakes his head. “It will help. Distraction.” Ilya quirks an eyebrow. “Not like that. Like…there’s a routine. Sometimes it works, sort of reroutes my brain.”

“This happens to you a lot.” It’s not a question but Shane nods. “Okay. We do shower routine.”

But under the hot spray of the shower, all Shane wants to do is press in close to Ilya, their arms around each other, just breathing until he doesn’t have to think about how anymore, until his heart slows down. Ilya lets him, keeps holding him firmly and pressing kisses into his hair, his neck, his shoulders until it becomes the good kind of too much. 

It would be so easy to slide right back into regular habits, to get on his knees in the shower, to treat this afternoon as a weird aberration and never think about it again. Except that he keeps remembering all the things Ilya did to make it different, and he’s not sure he can let it go, is half-convinced that trying to let it go might be the biggest mistake of his life. 

So he reaches behind Ilya to turn off the shower, and Ilya gets them each towels and another set of clean clothes for Shane—a hoodie this time, soft and warm, and gray sweatpants that fit him a little better than the last pair—and after they get dressed Shane helps put clean sheets on the bed and then lets Ilya pull him down onto it, both of them leaning against the headboard.

“Tell me what you want,” Shane says, and amusement flickers across Ilya’s face, because that’s usually his line. 

“Nothing,” Ilya says. 

Shane shakes his head. “Today felt different. Nice. It felt—” Serious. Real. Not casual. It maybe has never been casual, except in appearance. “Like we’re something.”

“We can’t be something.”

“Then why bother with all of this?” Shane scowls. “Why ask me to stay?”

Ilya turns his face away. “Was stupid.”

“Ilya,” Shane says, for the first time since they were on the couch, and it works almost too well. Ilya’s face snaps back toward him. His eyes look suspiciously wet and he’s pressing his lips together firmly, and Shane can’t help reaching out, curving his hand around Ilya’s jaw and dragging his thumb across his bottom lip, trying to soften his mouth. “Please. Tell me.”

“I tried,” Ilya says. “You didn’t understand.”

“Can you try again?”

“I don’t want to find a woman in Boston or L.A. or New York or Moscow. For months now, maybe years, I only want you. But you don’t want this. And we can’t have it anyway.”

“Of course I want it. I haven’t ever wanted anyone but you,” Shane says, surprised by how easy it is to admit. Maybe he should be embarrassed about it, maybe he will be later, but right now it just feels honest.

“You ran out of my house, Shane.”

“Yeah, okay, I freaked out. I do that. I get anxious and I get in my head. I was used to how things usually go with us and then you changed everything.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sometimes I need words,” Shane explains.  

“Is this why you always ask if we should talk?”

“Yeah.”

“Then tell me, instead.” 

“But…you said we can’t be something.”

“I just don’t see how.”

Shane thinks about that. The reality of their schedules. The reality of being professional athletes. Russia. “Would it be that different,” he asks, cautiously, “than what we’ve been doing? I mean, more talking maybe. We could text more and talk on the phone. We maybe…don’t sleep with other people?”

“Are you sleeping with other people?” Ilya asks, and he seems genuinely curious, not like he’s teasing. 

“No,” he says. “I haven’t.”

“Ever?” 

“I told you. I only want you.”

“Shane,” Ilya groans, and then he’s turning fully towards him, wrapping himself around Shane. Shane can’t help sliding his hand into Ilya’s damp hair, holding him close. 

“Maybe we try it,” Shane suggests. “See how it feels.”

“Talking more,” Ilya says. “Not seeing other people. We could try.”

“You want to?” Shane confirms.

“Yes.” Ilya says, shifting again, pulling them down to lay on the bed, his chest to Shane’s back, his knees tucked behind Shane’s. He presses his face to the back of Shane’s neck and breathes. “You will stay?”

“Yes,” Shane says. “Until morning. I promise.”

“Even if I order sushi later?”

Shane laughs. “I like sushi.”

“Okay. Just checking. Might be all fish, not just tuna, that scares you.”

“Fuck off,” Shane says, not meaning it. He never means it. Luckily, Ilya knows that.